Sunday, February 22, 2015

DNF Review: The Bargaining by Carly Anne West

The fact that neither of her parents wants to deal with her is nothing new to Penny. She’s used to being discussed like a problem, a problem her mother has finally passed on to her father. What she hasn’t gotten used to is her stepmother…especially when she finds out that she’ll have to spend the summer with April in the remote woods of Washington to restore a broken-down old house.Set deep in a dense forest, the old Carver House is filled with abandoned antique furniture, rich architectural details, and its own chilling past. The only respite Penny can find away from April’s renovations is in Miller, the young guy who runs the local general store. He’s her only chance at a normal, and enjoyable, summer.But Miller has his own connection to the Carver House, and it’s one that goes beyond the mysterious tapping Penny hears at her window, the handprints she finds smudging the glass panes, and the visions of children who beckon Penny to follow them into the dark woods. Miller’s past just might threaten to become the terror of Penny’s future….

Review

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I expected it to be a total me book. It's a mystery! And I'm a total sucker for mystery novels, if it's done well enough and if it's not predictable. Most times, I don't really ever find a mystery that I actually enjoy. Either the storyline was just too boring, or the twist was way too predictable to me. I grew up reading a ton of mystery books, like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and all, so it's really rare when I actually find a mystery book that leave me speechless because I totally didn't expect the twist in it.

This book is was a total disappointment. I have no idea what the mystery is like because I ended up DNFing this book at 20%. There was a only a mint of the mystery that I actually read, and it was a little creepy, but it only motivated me to read a few more pages until I quit.

The main character was extremely annoying and really got on my nerves. She was like one of those too stupid to live characters from horror movies. From the beginning, she was whiny, annoying, and just tried too hard to be "a rebel." She did whatever she could to annoy her parents because she was mad at them for getting a divorce and for acting like she is a problem. I wanted to strangle her in frustration. Her parents treat her like she's a problem because that's exactly what she is. She purposefully gets in trouble so her parents would get annoyed. She purposefully acts as the problem that her parents always say she is. She should think about her actions and then wonder why her parents treat her like a problem. Another problem I had with her was when she thought she heard someone in the woods. She looks around and doesn't find anyone. It's basically in the middle of no where and there's no one else around. Should she turn and leave or should she venture into the woods and search for this person? Duh, of course she's going to go into the woods and look for this person and probably end up lost. Because that's totally the smartest thing to do. *eye roll*

The writing style of this book was incredibly confusing and didn't hold my attention. This book isn't that long, and normally a book like this wouldn't taken me around a week or less to finish, but this one took me almost a month to read. And I only read up to 20% of it. Basically, it took me almost a month to read 20% of a book.
While reading this book, I considered DNFing it several times, but I was a little hesitant because it might've gotten better. So I went on Goodreads to read the reviews that other people posted for this book, and I was incredibly disappointed when many people were saying that the book drags on for a long time and that the mystery part of this book wasn't really come up again until near the ending on the book. That definitely didn't motivate me to read any further in the book, and I would've rather been reading something else, so this got DNFed.

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